. . . . . . 28

The ad­jec­tives used to de­scribe Con­fed­er­ate Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s 1863 raid into In­di­ana and Ohio range from “spec­tac­u­lar” and “in­cred­i­ble” to “fool­ish” and “worth­less.” Morgan bi­og­ra­pher James A. Ra­m­age calls it noth­ing more than a pin­prick in a healthy arm. His­to­rian Bruce Cat­ton clas­si­fied this cam­paign with all oth­ers by Morgan, say­ing that it made head­lines, with­out any doubt, but didn’t in­flu­ence the out­come of the war. Even fre­quent ref­er­ences to it as the “Great Raid” are po­ten­tially con­tra­dic­tory or mis­lead­ing be­cause many his­to­ri­ans and mil­i­tary an­a­lysts would ar­gue that it was any­thing but “great” in its ef­fect on the Con­fed­er­ate ef­fort to win the war.